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326
GOD
(are one), according to promise, giving your aid when
worshipped with reverence." It is even acknowledged that there were prior true religions which were worshipful. “And we worship,” says Yasna xvi. 3 (SBE. vol. xxxi. pp.
255-259)," and we worship the former religions of the
world devoted to righteousness a...." What is still more significant is that Zoroastrianism mentions the number of Ahuras as precisely four and twenty* . (see Early Zoroastrianism by Moulton, pp. 402 et seq.). Turning to Buddhism, too, one finds the same number twenty four also as the number of previous Buddhas. Even the number of Babylonian "counseller-Gods," we learn from Mr. J. M. Robertson's interesting compilation, Pagau Christs (vide p. 179), was four and twenty, but as little or nothing is known about them we cannot draw any certain inference one way or the other from this otherwise significant number,
* Cf. "... Mayst thou [O Man !) rise up there... along the path made by the Goods, the watery way they opened" (Vendidad, Fargard xxi. iii-C;SBE. vol. iv. p. 227). It is interesting to note that the etymological significance of the word tirthamkara is the finder of a fordable channel across the sea (of samsara-tradgmigratory condition).
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